Television - The great communicator on the world stage

President Ronald Reagan became known as the Great Communicator, a
distinction that earned him both plaudits and derogation. Reagan's
speeches moved, inspired, and reassured millions of people. Critics,
however, insisted that Reagan was an acting president, a performer who
brought to the White House the theatrical skills that he had learned in
Hollywood and who followed scripts that he had done little, if anything,
to create. Reagan, like most contemporary presidents, usually read texts
that speechwriters had prepared. Yet sometimes the words and often the
ideas were his own. Opponents deplored the troubling oversimplifications
in his folksy anecdotes and uplifting stories. Yet many viewers found an
authenticity that came from the president's sincerity and
conviction. Reagan was extraordinarily successful at using the White House
and, indeed, the world, as a stage—or perhaps, more accurately, a
studio—as he exploited the medium of television to build public
support for his presidency.

White House aides planned Reagan's public appearances with
meticulous care as television events. They chose the best camera angles,
chalked in toe marks so the president would know exactly where to stand,
and positioned reporters to minimize opportunities for unwanted questions.
The preparations reflected what the president's assistants called
the "line of the day," the story that they wanted to lead
the news in order to advance their legislative or international agenda.
What viewers saw, Reagan's communications experts thought, was more
important than what they heard. When the
CBS Evening News
ran a critical story in October 1984 about Reagan's use of
soothing images to obscure unpopular policies, reporter Lesley Stahl was
astounded when White House aide Richard Darman telephoned to congratulate
her. "You guys in Televisionland haven't figured it out,
have you?" Darman said. "When the pictures are powerful and
emotional, they override if not completely drown out the sound. Lesley, I
mean it, nobody heard you."

Televised images mattered so much to the Reagan White House partly because
of changes in TV news. By the early 1980s about two-thirds of the American
public said that television was their primary source of news. Viewers
could watch a growing number of news programs, including morning and
midday shows as well as the traditional evening broadcasts. During prime
time there were popular magazine programs, such as
60 Minutes
(CBS) and
20/20
(ABC), as well as brief updates called "newsbreaks." And at
the end of the day, there was
Nightline.
Cable TV, which reached 20 percent of television households in 1981 and
more than twice that proportion in 1985, offered more choices. On 1 June
1980 the Cable News Network became the first 24-hour news channel. Greater
competition and corporate pressures made network news executives more
concerned with ratings and willing to try to increase them by altering the
balance between information and entertainment. At CBS, for example, when
ratings plunged after Cronkite's retirement, the news director
urged the new anchor, Dan Rather, to dress in a sweater to appear friendly
and informal and insisted on more "feel-good" features. CBS
producers dropped a report about State Department reaction to Israeli
bombing in Lebanon to open a slot on the evening news of 30 November 1982
for a story about singing sheep. On all the networks, lighter features,
striking visuals, and ten-second sound bites increasingly became ways to
attract and hold viewers who had more choices, remote controls, and
seemingly shorter attention spans. The communications experts in the White
House exploited these trends, packaging presidential appearances to fit
the changes in TV news.

Reagan's international trips produced many dramatic and memorable
television scenes. The advance planners created public occasions, often in
striking surroundings, where the president would be in the spotlight. For
example, on the rocky coast of Normandy, Reagan gave a magnificent speech
in which he commemorated the fortieth anniversary of D-Day on 6 June 1984
by saluting "the boys of Pointe du Hoc … the champions who
helped free a continent … the heroes who helped end a war."
White House aide Michael Deaver made sure that the French scheduled
Reagan's address so it would air live during the network morning
news programs. In another stirring scene, Reagan expressed his fervent
anti-communism and his commitment to freedom when he stood before the
Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on 12 June 1987 and cried, "Mr.
Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Other trips produced less exalted,
but nonetheless effective events. During a trip to South Korea in November
1983, Reagan attended an outdoor service at a chapel within sight of the
North Korean border. One military police officer explained that a nearby
armored personnel carrier was there for "backdrop." In one
notorious case, advance planning failed. Presidential assistants did not
learn that SS troops were buried at Bitburg cemetery in West Germany
before the White House announced Reagan's visit. The president
refused to change his plans, but he also went to Bergen-Belsen, the site
of a Nazi concentration camp, where he gave one of his most moving
addresses.

Reagan's summits with Mikhail Gorbachev were international media
events with considerable symbolic significance. At their first meeting in
Geneva in November 1985, Reagan said that he recognized from
Gorbachev's smile that he was dealing with a different kind of
Soviet leader. Televised images of their close and friendly relations
symbolized the international changes that were occurring as the Cold War
began to wane. At their summit in Washington, D.C., in December 1987, the
most important substantive achievement was the signing of the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty. But what mattered as well was
what the news media called "Gorby fever," which the Soviet
leader stoked by stopping his limousine and plunging into welcoming crowds
in downtown Washington. When Reagan reciprocated by traveling to Moscow in
May 1988, he followed a schedule that was the result of elaborate
planning, including the use of polling and focus groups to test the themes
of his speeches. Cameras followed Reagan and Gorbachev as they strolled
through Red Square answering questions that appeared to be spontaneous,
but some of which had been planted. When a reporter asked about the
"evil empire," as Reagan had described the Soviet Union in a
famous speech in March 1983, the president replied, that was
"another time, another era." The televised scenes beginning
in late 1989 of revolutions in Eastern Europe and the opening of the
Berlin Wall confirmed Reagan's pronouncement.